Compare And Contrast – The Case of Two Doctors And The GMC

I’m just reading Craig Brown’s book about Princess Margaret at present, ‘Ma’am Darling, 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret’. Since Margaret and her husband Lord Snowdon have turned their toes up, rather a lot has been published regarding just how unpleasant they both were, some of which I have mentioned in passing on this blog.

Brown’s book tells me some things that I did already know, but there are a few interesting things in there which are new to me. Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret’s marriage went sour quite quickly and accounts are now emerging of just how much they loathed each other – it all seems to have been a bit ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ Margaret seems to have been seriously over-privileged and insulted everyone else on the planet as a matter of routine, but Snowdon is a stereotypical abusive husband of monstrous dimensions. He leaves notes for her about their house (well palace, to be precise) saying ‘I hate you’ and tells her that she resembles a ‘Jewish manicurist’. Much of his behaviour comes close to the conduct of the man in the famous play/film ‘Gaslight’, in which someone tries to convince their wife that she’s mad, using techniques such as misplacing things around the house and maintaining that she’s done it or constantly adjusting the gas lamp, swearing blind that he’s done no such thing and convincing her that it was all her work but that she hasn’t realised.

The north Wales mental health services were one big gas lighting machine. ‘What do you mean, Dr Jones is behaving improperly with female patients? Why NO-ONE else has ever made such a complaint.’ ‘You’ve been feeling depressed recently? No you haven’t, I know that you haven’t.’ ‘You were raped as a child. Yes you were, I know you were. That’s why you’re making these OUTRAGEOUS allegations about Dr Jones.’ Believe me, when one or two Hergest patients are gathered together in Dafydd’s name, the most extraordinary experiences are swapped and much entertainment can be derived.

Anyway, as well as participating in much gas lighting, Lord Snowdon took a leaf out of Lord Lucan’s book – told his wife that she was mad and sent her off to consult a Top Doctor. I’m very surprised that she agreed to go actually, but she did, although she didn’t bother to return after the initial consultation.

Snowdon despatched Ma’am Darling to a Dr Peter Dally. Peter Dally died in 2005 and his obituary in the Indie tells us that he was a specialist in anorexia/eating disorders (although there’s nothing in any of the accounts of Ma’am Darling to suggest that she experienced this sort of distress). Dally studied medicine at St Thomas’s, where he met his wife Ann. After house jobs at Tommy’s in 1955 he began training as a psychiatrist at St Ebba’s Hospital in Epsom. He then returned to Tommy’s where – like Dr Death did at about the same time – he worked for the lethal and unhinged William Sargant as a research registrar (for a brief overview of how much damage Sargant did to patients, see post ‘Dr Death’). Dally acted as an assistant in the writing of Sargant’s notorious 1963 text, ‘Introduction To Physical Methods Of Treatment In Psychiatry’. In 1961 Dally was appointed as Consultant Psychiatrist at Westminster Hospital where he remained until he retired in 1988. Although Sargant became utterly discredited and was seen in many quarters as a dangerous practitioner, like Dr Death Dally seems to have shown a high degree of loyalty to him. Dally’s book on anorexia, published in 1969, was dedicated to Sargant. In 1972 Dally helped open the psychiatry unit at Queen Mary Hospital Roehampton. Although he and Ann divorced in 1969, they remained on good terms and continued to share the same consulting rooms at 13 Devonshire Place after their divorce. Dally continued in private practice until 1993, after his retirement from the NHS in 1988.

Dally’s obituary in the BMJ tells us a bit more about him. Before he went to medical school Dally was in the Royal Navy. When he applied to study medicine he chose Tommy’s because his batman was going there. His batman was in the same year as Dally at Tommy’s and during their studies there continued to call Dally ‘Sir’.

Although Sargant held psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in complete contempt and only ever wanted to drug patients or subject them to ECT, insulin comas or lobotomies (or indeed all of these), the BMJ states that Dally ‘believed in’ both psychological and ‘physical’ treatments.

The BMJ also reveals that Dally’s reputation really took off when in 1961 – whilst Dally had already landed his consultancy at Westminster – Sargant asked Dally to look after his patients whilst he was away. According to the BMJ, it was at this point that patients began beating a path to Dally’s door. It may well have been because Dally was not so obviously as monstrous as Sargant, in the same way as north Wales believed that Tony Francis (Dr X) was a very great relief after Dafydd. Sadly Tony Francis was doing an awful lot of things that he should not have been doing and was doing a lot of them to conceal the activities of Dafydd and the paedophiles.

The person that I am more interested in though is Ann Dally, Dally’s wife. Ann Dally became very well-known in the 1980s when she encountered a great deal of difficulty with the GMC.

Ann Dally was a very impressive woman. Her first degree was in history and she was a contemporary of Margaret Thatcher’s at Somerville College, Oxford. Her background was very different to Thatcher’s however. Ann Dally was the daughter of Claude Mullins, a well-known London magistrate and law reformer and Gwendoline Brandt, the daughter of a German banking family. Ann’s family were involved with progressive causes – the family were friends with, among others, Marie Stopes. Ann was sent to fashionable progressive schools – she was expelled from one for ‘being a bad influence’. After Oxford, Ann decided to read medicine and in 1947 she was one of the first three women students at Tommy’s.

Ann encountered the sort of prejudice that women doctors of her generation all did. Furthermore, she embarked upon a family – she ended up having six children. Her early years in medicine were occupied with working in women’s and children’s health and out-patient clinics. She did this because it was the only sort of work that she could fit around her family, although she still encountered much naked discrimination.

In 1979, Ann began treating heroin addicts. This started when she treated one patient who had been receiving maintenance treatment but which was withdrawn. His life disintegrated and he lost his job. So Ann restarted him on maintenance therapy and his life stabilised again. Ann began taking a big interest in the treatment of drug addiction and soon acquired many such patients.

During the 1960s, the Drug Dependence Units in the UK routinely prescribed maintenance doses of heroin or methadone for addicts. The argument was that if this was done, they could live normal lives, hold down jobs, support themselves/their families and would not fall into crime in order to finance their habit. A lot of Top Doctors involved in the treatment of addicts robustly argue that this is undoubtedly the best way of treating people with heroin addiction. However in the mid 70s, a group of Top Doctors whom Ann Dally termed ‘the Maudsley Mafia’ made maintenance therapy increasingly unavailable. Ann continued to prescribe maintenance therapy.

Presumably somebody must have believed that Ann Dally knew what she was doing, because by the early 80s she was a member of the Gov’t medical working group on drug dependence. Yet in 1983 Ann ended up in front of the GMC. She was found guilty of overprescribing and was admonished.

In 1987 Ann Dally was back in front of the GMC again. This time she was charged with taking on more addicts than she could properly look after, prescribing excessively and taking on patients who could not afford to pay her fees without resorting to crime. She was cleared of that lot, but found guilty of another charge, that of prescribing irresponsibly to an unemployed roofer and not properly examining him or monitoring his progress. The police had set up a ‘sting’ and had produced ampoules dispensed to the roofer which had been found in the possession of another addict.

Ann Dally appealed to the judicial committee of the Privy Council but lost. Lord Goff was on that committee. The upshot was that Ann was not allowed to prescribe or posses controlled drugs for 14 months. She did continue in private practice but not for addicts.

Ann Dally received a huge amount of support from some Top Doctors and others who all maintained that she had been unfairly hung out to dry. People stated that she looked after her addicted patients far better than the Maudsley contingent cared for theirs – it was alleged that they weren’t even SEEING their patients – and that Ann listened to her patients and paid attention to their emotional well-being in a way that most other Top Doctors did not. Most Top Doctors hate addicts anyway – I witnessed this myself when I worked at St Georges, they really loathed them on the basis that addicts are often stealing from the other patients to fund their habits, trying to con the pharmacy or lying through their teeth about something else with a view to acquiring drugs. There is certainly some degree of truth in this, I witnessed all this in an addict whom I knew well some years ago. He was completely incapable of telling the truth if the acquisition of drugs was on the agenda. Ann Dally however seemed to have a much more sympathetic view of addicts and their problems.

Jean Robinson, a lay member of the disciplinary committee at the GMC said of Dally that she ‘made an appalling impression at the GMC’. She had ‘far too many patients to look after properly and they were vulnerable people who needed protection’. The committee were also shocked at the money that Ann was making through consulting and dispensing. Robinson stated that Dally had purchased a house in Hampstead as well as a Sussex farmhouse and earned £75,000 pa.

My initial reading of the case of Ann Dally conjured up one image – DAFYDD. The allegations that the GMC levelled at Ann are exactly those that have been levelled at Dafydd Alun Jones, including by me (see post ‘The Evolution Of A Drugs Baron?’).

But the picture is a little more complex. Ann openly supported maintenance therapy and was frank that she was doing this. In the 1990s Dafydd went on TV programmes boasting about how he had replaced methadone with huge quantities of benzodiazepenes and what a miraculous cure for heroin addiction this was. Dafydd was most critical of methadone maintenance therapy in public. But in private, drug using patients of Dafydd’s were openly telling people that Dafydd was great because he’d ‘give you anything you asked for, anything at all’. My post ‘The Evolution Of A Drugs Baron?’ describes how I and other patients watched Dafydd build up a huge practice of addicts at the Hergest Unit and then take them with him when he ‘retired’.

Although Ann Dally ended up in front of the GMC, no-one was ever able to produce the shit on her that they have produced on Dafydd. It seems that she WAS looking after her addicted patients. Dafydd wasn’t, they were in the most appalling state of decay – whilst they cheerily told people that he was flogging them drugs and writing them helpful Court reports in the wake of them being arrested. I was told that some helpful Court reports were written for some very serious offences, including armed robbery and rape. So Dafydd’s practice wasn’t keeping anyone away from crime.

As for Jean Robinson’s condemnation of the money that Ann Dally made – readers will know that I am very rude about troughing Top Doctors. But Ann Dally’s lifestyle was no more excessive than that of other Top Doctors in London in private practice at that time. It was pretty much standard for them to have a house in a location such as Hampstead or Wimbledon and another place in the countryside in the home counties. Neither is the income that was quoted for her that excessive – they earned a lot of money.

The case of Ann Dally simply brings home how much of Dafydd’s misconduct was being ignored by the GMC and others. Dafydd really was doing everything that Ann Dally was accused of – and Dafydd was doing much more besides. The GMC knew as well. By the time that Ann was in front of the GMC in 1987, Dafydd was being sued for false imprisonment, had been the subject of numerous complaints to the GMC – at least one which involved a death and during the course of one month alone five complaints were made about him – and of course I’d made my complaint about him by then, which was another complaint of false imprisonment with attempted bribery and threats into the bargain.

In the early 1990s at least one patient in north Wales rang Crimestoppers and gave them a detailed account of a number of criminal offences committed by Dafydd, with the names of the victims. The same person rang Crimestoppers AGAIN weeks later, after it was obvious that no enquiries had been made. No enquiries were ever made. Subsequent to this, someone rang the North Wales Police and reported one of Dafydd’s ‘addicts’ who could be seen openly flogging class A drugs to school kids in Bangor – again, nothing was done, although this was at a time when the North Wales Police regularly banged on about their fight against drugs and how no-one must be reluctant to report criminal activity. Unless of course Dafydd was at the root of it.

I am interested in Ann’s use of the phrase ‘the Maudsley Mafia’. Dafydd was of course being protected by the Maudsley Mafia himself – it was many moons ago that he passed through the hands of dear old Bob Hobson at the Maudsley, but Dafydd knew enough to drop Hobson’s name whenever he received a telephone call from a Top Doctor in another part of the UK enquiring about a patient. In fact the mention of Bob Hobson was so effective that it even prevented Top Doctors asking anything more in the face of Dafydd describing a young female patient as ‘attractive and seductive’, a patient who had already told the enquiring Top Doctors that Dafydd was sexually exploiting female patients. It really couldn’t have been more obvious. The Top Doctors at St George’s quaintly described Dafydd as having ‘lost his boundaries’. He lost his trousers and underpants on a number of occasions as well.

So how did Ann Dally ever come to the attention of the GMC in the first place? Who was it that reported her? And why did the police ever set up a sting involving her patient? Someone really wanted to nail Ann Dally.

Ann Dally wrote a book about her ordeal at the hands of the GMC – I am going to try to get hold of a copy. I suspect that I may recognise some of the names involved in the shafting of a Top Doctor, who seemed to have been genuinely caring for a difficult group of patients who are usually explicitly rejected by other Top Doctors. Not even a former husband with Royal connections could save her bacon. Which is another weird aspect of her case. The reason why the London medical schools have so much clout is the fact that so many of them have Royalty, senior politicians or celebs as patients. The presence of VIPs among the patients means that a great deal of crap is concealed on everyone’s part. Craig Brown’s book mentions that Roddy Llewellyn, the notorious toy boy of Ma’am Darling’s, at one point overdid the drugs, the alcohol, the shagging and the partying so much that he was admitted to Charing Cross Hospital for three weeks. Ma’am Darling herself had been so overwhelmed just previously to this that she’d taken an overdose, so Royal duties were suspended and the Palace announced that Princess Margaret was suffering from a ‘heavy cold’. A London hospital and a Royal personage takes one into a different paradigm. Ma’am Darling herself, after a life-time of heavy smoking, memorably had part of her lung surgically removed. That doesn’t tend to happen with the average pleb – when emphysema or a carcinoma sets in, the patient is told that this is a condition with a very poor prognosis; there’s a token effort made, but that’s usually the end.

So there’s really only one thing that provides more protection than Royalty – playing a key role in the Westminster Paedophile Ring.

I really have missed the career opportunity of a lifetime. I could have been the biggest and most successful blackmailer that the UK has ever seen. From the late 1980s I could have demanded regular payments from Dafydd, Tony Francis, Lucille Hughes and the gang in north Wales, then money from Hammersmith, then from Vincent Marks at Surrey, then from old Bluglass and Robert Owen and associates at the Welsh Office and then hit the bigtime at St Georges – Burns, Mitchell-Heggs, Eastman, Jacobson, Levinson, Ruth White. Then I could have tapped a few others for a few bob, like Esther and Marjorie Wallace, Donald Acheson and of course the whole of the GMC. Plus a few lawyers and judges and Thatcher herself, as well as an assortment of other politicians. And from what I’ve been reading recently Lord Snowdon probably as well.

Unfortunately I just tried to tell many of the above what was going on…

Author: Sally Baker

I am a writer and a sociologist, originally from Somerset, but I’ve been based in Wales for most of my life. I had my first encounter with a mental health professional in 1984 at the age of 21. My GP described this man to my then partner – who also became a sociologist – as someone who had experienced ‘considerable success’. My meeting with this psychiatrist was a disaster and we attempted to complain about his insensitivity and highly inappropriate behaviour. That was the first time we were threatened and pressurised to withdraw a complaint against a mental health professional. This man is long dead – he was a retired psychiatrist from the North Wales Hospital Denbigh, T. Gwynne Williams, who was working shifts in the student health centre at University College of North Wales (now Bangor University). We discovered years later that this ‘successful man’ was notorious – he had been an enthusiastic lobotomist…

16 thoughts on “Compare And Contrast – The Case of Two Doctors And The GMC”

Then for gods sake go to the police, the IPCC, your MP, the Independent Child Abuse Enquiry or whoever you think a fit organisation or enquiry to investigate your allegations instead of just continually blogging about and repeating those allegations … oh and don’t forget to take your newly found ‘evidence’ with you

Anonymous, I really don’t know why you keep coming to this blog, leaving the same asinine comment. You have been told by me and my correspondents that we HAVE been to the police, our MPs etc. One of my correspondents IS a former policeman and he is currently giving evidence to the Independent Child Abuse Enquiry.

Now I have NEVER yet had to tell someone not to leave a comment on this blog. If you choose to come here again and you wish to leave a comment that does not involve telling me and my correspondents to go to the police etc when you know that we already have but were ignored over a period of years, I will be happy to publish it. But if you simply leave yet another comment suggesting that I or my correspondents did not spend years using every appropriate channel available to raise the alarm, I will delete it.

Is that clear Anonymous? I note that you are still the only person who has ever e mailed me who refuses to give your name. Should I just call you Nurse? Or perhaps Sister? Because you seem to be operating at the level of a not very senior person in a moribund organisation who is well aware that all is not as it should be who is simply trying to irritate people who are bringing serious wrongdoing into the public domain.

I have just discovered an article from the Lancet archive concerning Ann Dally. It explains that after the Indie published it’s obituary of her, they received an angry letter from Sir Graeme Catto, the President of the GMC at the time of Ann’s death, robustly defending the GMC’s action against Ann, stating that the GMC was ‘just doing their job’.

Catto was President of the GMC 2002-09. He had to deal with the aftermath of Harold Shipman. How many hundred patients was it that Shipman polished off?? 300??? Or was it a few more??
2002-09 – the years when the assaults and suicides at Hergest rose ever upward. The years when I wrote to the GMC about DR Tony Roberts – the man with the second highest suicide rate in England and Wales among his female patients, the man who unlawfully refused me treatment, the man who blocked an investigation into a complaint of mine which included an assault on me by staff which left injuries. I also wrote to the GMC during that time about a junior doctor at Hergrest whom I knew to be medically unfit to practice himself. My complaint was never investigated. A few years later this man carried out such violent attacks on his wife that she was sectioned for her own distress. His children were removed from his care on the grounds of severe neglect.

2002 – that was the date on the forged document that was found in the possession of the GMC which purported to be a letter from me. If you are reading this Graeme, I’d really like an explanation for that. Or was it someone just doing their job?

Catto is Emeritus Prof of Medicine at the Universities of London and Aberdeen; Hon Consultant Nephrologist at Guys and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation and the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.

He was a founding fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

In 2000 Catto was Vice-Principal of Kings College, London. and Dean of Guys and St Thomas’s Hospitals Medical and Dental School.
Catto was also Pro- Vice-Chancellor of the University of London.

He is President of the College of Medicine, a spin off from Prince Charles Foundation for Integrated Health, which has been much criticised. The College of Medicine ‘aims to ensure that the patient is at the centre of medicine and all healthcare policies and systems’. Catto hasn’t got much of a track record of doing that.

Most terrifyingly, Catto is Chair of Dignity In Dying, which seeks to legalise assisted suicide for terminally ill adults. I know that convincing arguments have been out forward for euthanasia in certain circumstances, but this is Catto running this outfit. What if he decides that someone just ought to do their job? And he then forges a letter if it transpires that someone was just doing their job that they probably should not have been doing? Or indeed was just dong their job when they were far too crazed and unhinged to have ever been appointed to that job in the first place? Such as Harold Shipman or Dafydd?

Anonymous have you ever heard of someone being subject to a police enquiry for leaving a forwarding address in a letter box on the the outside of a property that you use to live in and know that two parcels have been accidentally delivered to?
Why wouldn’t the current resident return them to sender, the post office or just hold them until you collected them. Surely the current resident is guilty of a crime and should be subject to investigation? I don’t even know this person and the police won’t say who they are? But I’ve now found out.
This has happened to me…. bizarre and ridiculous isn’t it. What happens when someone is lost or Jehovah’s call or flyers for fast food and junk mail keep coming into the outside letter box……..You get the Police to carry out an investigation and warn them to stop ???
It just happens the person who did this is in public office and was actually on the local council. Not exactly open and approachable!! Obviously they select who they feel like speaking to or representing as long as their not gypos, blacks, disabled or other subhumans you have stolen from!
Their professional speciality happens to be safe guarding the vulnerable too !!
It doesn’t say much for equality diversity, openness and make a mockery of “safe guarding” does it?
Do you want the evidence to take the case up for me ? I can supply it via drop box?
What do you reckon ???

This is certainly a novel approach to dealing with the idiot that is Anonymous Mike – perhaps we should all forward our evidence (that we only managed to gather after many years through the use of lawyers) to Anonymous and they’ll soon realise just how easy it is to get the police etc to mount an investigation into organised crime that involves people in public office! On the other hand my evidence is far too precious to be handed over to the likes of Anonymous – John McTernan’s brother-in-law has already tried to disappear with some of it, I don’t want anymore similar incidents.

I have received more asinine comments from Anonymous but as they were very similar in nature to Anonymous’s previous contributions, they were deleted as promised.

To an external observer the comments of anonymous are surely a mark of success.
I have stated this many times to family and friends. Parties trying to nobble or discredit you are not doing because they are having a nice time. The response is to press on with more vigour.

Thanks Richard, I have known for the last thirty years that people telling everyone who would listen that I was mad and dangerous and should not be befriended or employed under any circumstances was being done for a reason that was unrelated to any putative madness on my part. What pisses me off is that the likes of Anonymous can harass the likes of my correspondents and I in public view because it is true that no authorities HAVE investigated the very serious wrongdoing that we have evidence of and therefore Anonymous clearly believes that she/he is in with a chance of discrediting us.

Of course ALL authorities knew what was going on – the people involved in the matters described on this blog will have actually been under observation by the security services themselves, I am certain of that. They were variously involved with ‘Welsh extremism’, crime involving child abuse and drug dealing, issues of national security; they worked in politics, the civil service, the judiciary, they had links with the Royal Family, some were politicians involved in the negotiations over N Ireland; ALL such people are vetted and observed by MI5. It is admitted that rogue members of the security services colluded with child sexual abuse in the 70s and before – the security services themselves have admitted it. Since 1984 there has been legislation in place allowing the security services to tap pretty much any telephones that they felt like – this was finally admitted a few years ago, by the security services – and more recently the security services obtained permission to access ANY forms of communication between anyone at all in the UK if it was being done ‘in the national interest’ or with regard to ‘terrorism’ or ‘serious organised crime’. Now I think that covers the matters that we’ve all discussed on this blog. So yes, the security services will have been bugging away til the cows come home and will have been doing so for many years. But because they’re all up their own arses about never showing themselves, or never saying anything more than ‘we cannot confirm or deny this’, the likes of us have to have our lives destroyed whilst Special Branch and MI5 watch it happen. And then put up with idiocy from a fool like Anonymous, who will not understand how the game works but does know that their ward manager hasn’t been arrested, so they can waste our time when we bring what is happening to public attention.

There’s a limit to how much nonsense serious readers want to read – anon has reached it. Thanks Sally. On a ‘lighter ‘note tying two previous themes together -data protection and awards. You may have covered it already but earlier this year there was a stink at the Royal Free Trust in NW London which had handed over 1.6 million patient records to google to test a new medical app. without peoples’ knowledge or of course consent. A FOI discovered what had gone on. The lead governor is Richard Lindley who subsequently has been awarded an MBE..ding dong. He didn’t do it all by himself but there is no record of an apology from The Lead Govenor. His second wife Carol Stone ‘socialite and network queen’ to quote a news report has also been awarded one. Matching pair. Richard published ‘Protecting the Vulnerable Autonomy and Consent in Health Care’ years ago – embarrassing? They don’t know the meaning of the word.

So I am not the only one sick of Anons fuckwittery. I have offered to publish their comments if they manage to rise above their playground taunting, but if my other correspondents elect to ban Anon from this blog I will be happy to do so, although I definitely don’t want censoring comment to have to happen again on here.

I think I do remember reading about the Royal Free business – the mass sharing/breaching of patient data without patients knowledge or consent goes on constantly in the NHS, not only by clinicians but by researchers too I am ashamed to say. I witnessed it constantly at St Georges – and was made to feel like an over-sensitive idiot for commenting that I found this rather worrying. When I first began work there I was handed a stack of patient records and told that as a member of the research team I ‘had clinical freedom’ to access those records. I responded that surely, as a researcher rather than a clinician, that I should seek the patients’ permission before I did this. People looked at me as though I had two heads – ooh no, you don’t have to do THAT. I felt so bad about this – it breached all my principles and as someone who’s confidence had already been breached constantly by those we know and love in the north Wales mental health services I was bloody well not going to access patients records without permission – so I asked the patients. My colleagues found out and gave me a bollocking!!!! I also heard a FURIOUS telephone message left on an answaphone at Bangor University by an irate patient from south Wales who had discovered that his data had been shared without permission. The breach had actually been committed I think by Swansea University, but the project was a joint one which included Bangor and the man concerned had obviously seen a list of phone numbers connected with the project and rung the wrong one. God he was cross – he yelled down the phone that if he ever saw the researcher from south Wales again (Dr Alison someone, I can’t remember her surname) he’d ‘have her arse’. His rant was really impressive and for good reason. I asked the leader of the Bangor branch of the project whether she was going to consult Dr Alison whoever about this, only to be told ‘oh no, it happens all the time’. Who was this project leader at Bangor who had such a laid back attitude to the unlawful passing around of data across Wales? Step forward Professor Catherine Robinson, ‘service user and carer academic lead’, currently tweeting away about her success at bagging a few million quid to advise Johnny Foreigner in India on matters concerning suicide. As someone who works ‘in partnership’ with the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board which has one of the highest suicide rates in the UK and has had for years, she’s obviously in an excellent position to do this. Just don’t give her access to your personal clinical data, it’ll turn up in Mumbai without you knowing anything about it.

I am also in the possession of a signed letter from Alun Davies – the corrupt non-clinical former manager of the Hergest Unit – to one of his colleagues written some years ago explaining that he has my medical records and he personally keeps him, because I have been consulting lawyers trying to access them. Davies also mentions that he has read my records to see if there are any comments that would result in me successfully suing in them. It was illegal for Davies to be doing any of that.

Protocol, ethical guidance and the law are breached daily.

It’s not that these people don’t know the meaning of the word ’embarrassing’ Lydia, they are only too happy to accuse others of embarrassing them should someone dare suggest breaches of good practice or even criminal conduct should be investigated, it’s that they don’t CARE. Especially those who harbour a desire for a gong. Which incredibly enough the most surprising people do – scores of Top Doctors really do yearn for a knighthood, I’m not sure why but it does hold real meaning for many of them. I am well aware that the utter fools who run the Betsi Board pursue such ambitions – Higson, Martin et al have spent decades slavering away in the hope of an OBE or MBE (indeed Higson has now got one), but I wouldn’t expect anything else from a collection of wallies who were children of local Top Doctors and their associates, who then picked up rather poor degrees from Bangor or Aber and moved into jobs – that were probably secured by nepotism – in the north Wales NHS, but when you meet Top Doctors from (supposedly) reputable medical schools who are rubbing noses in high society anyway and who already enjoy a very nice lifestyle indeed and don’t feel the sort of inadequacies that Higson and Martin obviously feel, WHY would they even want a knighthood?? It is a real mystery to me – it’s not as if knighthoods are only dispensed to worthy people, just look at some of the people who’ve got one. Savile being the most glaring example, but Savile was far from alone.

If I had been clinical director of a hospital whose staff were concealing organised crime and where the neglect and mismanagement were so bad that patients had murdered each other and committed suicide regularly and which had been subjected to the most damning comments after a public inquiry, I don’t think that I could claim to be an ‘expert’ on ‘service user inclusion and empowerment’ and accept a CBE and a place on the Equality and Human Right Commission. And I doubt that you could either. But we are not Dr Rachel Perkins. These people are not operating on the same plane as you or I. They do not give a damn – even after they have been exposed. I note that Helena Kennedy turned up on Woman’s Hour yesterday, commenting about gender equality issues in law and in cases in which mental health issues have played a role. The Helena who worked closely and extensively with and is a big buddy of Professor Nigel Eastman, corrupt Top Doc of St Georges, colleague of Rachel Perkins, someone who concealed the wrongdoing of Dafydd and the paedophiles when he was most definitely confronted with it years ago. I outed St Helena on this blog back in the spring and I am told that her colleagues at Doughty Chambers are aware of my blog, so I suspect that Helena is too. Who else is at Doughty? Only Theo Huckle QC, another man who in his capacity as Counsel General for Wales completely ignored documentary evidence of 30 yrs worth of serious crime in the north Wales mental health services. Another barrister at Doughty is Amal Clooney, wife of George, mother of the famous twins. If I was Amal I’d get out of there and quickly.

Suicide is a criminal offence in India. I wonder if she was telling them that it should be treated compassionately as an “mental illness” ? They imprisoned me for threatening suicide !!!!
What a waste of taxpayers money NICE legislation, procedures and protocol are. I suppose it looks good and makes parasites seem useful though !!!!!

Yes in many other countries there are legal problems if one attempts suicide, although as you point out in practice there are people in the UK who have been imprisoned for threatening suicide, like you and my friend at the Hergest Unit who was arrested and imprisoned for telling a nurse that he was so suicidal that he ‘felt like chopping a gas pipe’. There was a case reported in the Daily Post a few months ago in which a young woman whom even the psyches admitted was seriously ill with depression was imprisoned for making a (very incompetent) attempt at setting fire to her own house in an attempt to kill herself. The fire never caught, it just smouldered a bit, but she made the mistake of admitting that her intention had been to start a fire to kill herself. BANG, arrested and imprisoned. It is unbelievably appallingly brutal and inhumane. No-one from the UK should feel able to lecture people in other countries about the best ways of dealing with suicide – particularly someone who works in partnership with and who is funded by the Betsi, whose staff prosecute patients for threatening suicide!

Whatever Catherine Robinson thinks that she’s teaching Indians, there is never any details of the work provided on her twitter feed – she boasted about bagging the dosh for the project (several times) and tweeted photos of Indian scenes when she was over there and for some reason tweeted a photo of a squiggle in ink that she’d dribbled, labelled ‘downtime in India’, but there hasn’t been a word about doing any actual work. My blog sees ten times as much action as her working day seems to and I’m still co-authoring academic stuff too. Robinson is trying to pretend that she’s on trend politically though in the face of the nation’s love-in with Jeremy Corbyn – she retweets lame rather pinkish slogans like ‘more money for the NHS needed NOW’ or ‘the Mental Health Act is not the problem, discrimination is’. She retweeted a corker earlier today, another comment about the lack of money ‘for nurses’. From what I remember of Catherine Robinson she’s nearly as rude about nurses as I am and she knows damn well that their pay scales compare favourably with many other public service graduate professions – and she obviously hasn’t read todays report from the RCN admitting that nursing is in a ‘moral vacuum’ and is now pursuing a tick box culture with no compassion or thought about the patient! It’s good to see that the RCN have finally fessed up to the sorry state of their profession.

NICE is anything BUT an ‘independent’ advisory body – its committees are log jammed with people who have carried out the research into the interventions which it endorses and recommends, the prime example of someone with such a conflict of interest being Jo Rycroft-Malone, the PVC for Research at Bangor University. Accountability is so slack that Rycroft-Malone doesn’t even bother to cover her tracks – her online biography listed her involvement in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy research, then her position as Chair of the NICE implantation committee. Which recommended MBCT just after dear old Jo and her mates carried out their research into it! But then Jo received funding from the Betsi, sat on the Board at the Betsi and noted in the register of interests that her partner works for the Betsi. I wonder if he works in the finance dept??? It is gobsmacking.

Sally was the case of the women who tried to commit suicide by setting fire to her house from Ruabon near Wrexham. Did it fail because a neighbour broke in ???
Her feet didn’t touch the floor HMP Styl straight away which is rather supprising because there very reluctant to imprison women for a single offence. If it’s the same lady the press reports indicated there had been significant CMHT failures. No doubt harsh action was taken because it was a council house and highlighted Wrexham CMHT incompetence. I certain I know of her and have intended to make enquires since I know a lot of people in Ruabon. Absolutely disgusting negect. I suspect the truth of her situation is far worse than reported.

That all sounds familiar – and it was a council house. I did mention it on the blog when it happened.
There may be a reluctance to imprison women under certain circumstances, but if a woman dares upset the paedophiles’ friends she’ll soon find herself banged up for something trivial or indeed something that she hasn’t done after the paedophiles’ friends have lied through their teeth in court.

I took it as read that there would have been significant CMHT failures. People need to wake up and realise that nearly every time an MH patient is in Court it is a result of significant MH failures. And sometimes – as in the cases of you and me – the person is up in Court because the ‘services’ have screwed up so badly their Final Solution is to mount a prosecution against the patent in order to ensure that there will be no chance of anyone investigating serious complaint…

Just found the Daily Post article she had been referred to psychiatric ward Wrexham Maelor Hospital the week before. The notorious Heddfan unit so it is no coincidence she was given five years and four months. Her face looks familiar I’ve possibly met her somewhere !!!!

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/wrexham-woman-burned-down-home-8869010
While searching for this case I stumble across another similar case that made the national press as well. The only difference being that Aimee wanted to kill her children as well probably because she couldn’t bare to be parted from them. Rather than empathy and understanding it sounds as if the book was thrown at her to hide the failure of Heddfan “professionals” as usual when they are implicated. I would have expected the Judge to be asking why she wasn’t treated appropriately surly this is the purpose of their existence ???

I’m on holiday Mike so I haven’t followed the news as closely as I usually do but Heath’s mates are already gearing up to throw shit at Mike Veale – Seligman, Heath’s godson, was on the Today programme earlier. Read about Seligman in my post re Ted Heath…